Summer is over. The trees begin to lose their leaves, nature is preparing for winter in our Northern hemisphere. Traditionally this was the time of the year which we associated with death. The death of nature, where the visible life withdraws and retracts into the potential for the rebirth next spring.
Our societies have lost many traditions, most of us are hardly aware of the change in Nature. We have heating and electric light when it is cold and dark and we have air conditioning in our houses for when it is hot. We have the possibility to survive the heat in artificial surroundings like shopping centers and recreational inside parks.
Ignoring Nature, ignoring Death
We don’t care about Nature, in so many ways. And we don’t care about life, not really. Not at all about death. We try to ignore it as much as we can, only the names of certain days in the calendar, like “All Saints” and “Totensonntag” (a protestant special day in Germany for remembering the dead) remind us about death and the people who have died in the past. How come that we need special periods and days to remember death and that we need to face it, sooner or later, ourselves? And how many people actually are willing to be reminded of it? Why is the topic such a taboo today which we try to avoid by all means?